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Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.Indd An Introduction to Systematic Theology Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.1 1 10/10/07 5:01:21 PM Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.2 2 10/10/07 5:01:21 PM An Introduction to Systematic Theology Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God CO R NEL I U S Van Til S ECOND E DITION EDITED BY WILLIAM EDGAR R Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.3 3 10/10/07 5:01:22 PM © 1974 den Dulk Christian Foundation Introduction and annotations © 2007 William Edgar Text based on The Works of Cornelius Van Til CD-ROM (New York: Labels Army Co., 1997). Used by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photo- copy, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Com- pany, P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version or from the American Standard Version. Page design by Lakeside Design Plus Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van Til, Cornelius, 1895–1987 An introduction to systematic theology : prolegomena and the doctrines of revelation, scripture, and God / Cornelius Van Til ; edited by William Edgar.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-87552-789-5 (pbk.) 1. Theology, Doctrinal. I. Edgar, William, 1944– II. Title. BT75.3.V36 2007 230—dc22 2007018614 Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.4 4 10/10/07 5:01:23 PM CONTENTS Introduction by William Edgar 1 Preface 11 1. The Idea and Value of Systematic Theology 15 2. The Method of Systematic Theology 26 3. Christian Epistemology 56 4. Christian Epistemology: The Position of Charles Hodge 71 5. Christian Epistemology: The Positions of Herman Bavinck and Valentine Hepp 89 6. Christian-theistic Revelation 117 7. Present General Revelation about Nature 137 8. Present General Revelation about Man 154 9. Present General Revelation about God 176 10. Special Revelation 190 11. Scripture 223 12. The Inspiration of Scripture 241 13. The Incomprehensibility of God 260 14. The Apologetic Import of the Incomprehensibility of God 282 15. Innate and Acquired Knowledge of God 310 Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.5 5 10/10/07 5:01:23 PM C ON T EN ts 16. The Names and Incommunicable Attributes of God 319 17. The Triunity of God 348 18. The Communicable Attributes of God 369 Index 399 i Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.6 6 10/10/07 5:01:24 PM INTRODUctiON BY WILLIAM Edgar he main title of this volume, An Introduction to Systematic Theol- ogy, could give the wrong impression. That is why a subtitle has been added in this edition. For this is not a survey of systematic Ttheology, but an introduction, in the sense of a foundation, a theological and philosophical underpinning. Thus, unlike Louis Berkhof’s Introduc- tion to Systematic Theology or Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, this book is limited to what was called, in the older terminology, the pro- legomena. As such, it covers the nature and method of systematic the- ology, the question of knowledge (epistemology), and revelation, both general and special. But unlike most prolegomena the book does venture into theology proper, or the doctrine of God. The reason for this selec- tion, clearly, is that Cornelius Van Til is concerned first and foremost for apologetics, the defense of the faith. He says it himself in the preface to the 1971 edition of the work (originally penned in 1936): “The present syllabus has an apologetic intent running through it”; to which he adds that these days, in order to generate Reformed theology, apologetics is a necessary undergird- ing. That is especially the case since apologetics of the right kind can help wrench us out of our man-centered outlook. In Van Til’s view, Im- manuel Kant has so defined the contemporary playing field that both philosophy and theology have been controlled by his method ever since. The essence of Kant’s approach, as Van Til points out, is to make the human being, not God, the final reference point in all predication. That is to say, if we are to make sense out of anything, the presuppo- sition for assigning meaning and value to all of reality is human au- tonomy. Kant is a watershed figure because of his bold achievement, Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.1 1 10/10/07 5:01:25 PM I N tr O D U cti ON the “Copernican revolution” of thought. Instead of reality coming to us already defined from the outside, we define reality from inside our heads. Or, to bring it more up-to-date, describing a post-Marxist ap- proach, Van Til cites as an example of such autonomy what Colling- wood calls historical consciousness, which has become the agreed basis for our method of thinking. There is nothing new in centering predication and knowledge on the human being, of course. So Kant is not radically new. Still, he repre- sents a sea-change because of the degree to which his commitment to rationalism has influenced the succeeding generations. His work would eventually spell the death of metaphysics in most of the leading Western philosophies. Metaphysics pursues questions about being (ontology) and the universe (cosmology). Placing them in an absolute realm beyond science, Kant intended to protect them from rational assault. The effect, however, was that they eventually lost their relevance. Nietzsche famously pointed out that Kant’s unknowable absolute world is not consoling, redeeming, or obligating, and is therefore useless. At present there seems no end to the permutations stemming from anti- metaphysical views. Nietzsche’s descendants cynically reduce knowl- edge to power. The varieties of hermeneutical philosophies informally known as “postmodern” are an attempt to find some sort of meaning when “metanarratives” can no longer be believed. Heidegger suggested rediscovering being through poetry. Instead of knowing objective truth, however, what we have is Dasein, or being-in-the-world, including hu- man consciousness. Our principal task should be the hermeneutics of Dasein. Heidegger indirectly engendered various post-structuralist think- ers, such as Derrida, Foucault, and Kristeva. For them, there is no ultimate meaning, only this-worldly preoccupations. Derrida, for example, rejects any nostalgia for being, and deconstructs any attempts at reintroducing humanism, yet goes on to suggest that we find our identity in language. Thus, for many of those thinkers, traditional meaning is devastated, and we are left only with the fragments, as though one had decided to shatter a beautiful vase and look for its qualities in some of the chips. Certain theologians have attempted to enter into an alliance with these kinds of post-Kantian views, affirming the possibility of a Christian faith untainted by metaphysics and rational pretensions. They make bold at- tempts to identify the risk of faith with models such as dialectics or post- modernism. The Roman Catholic philosopher Giani Vattimo suggests we embrace a “non-religious Christianity,” which is free from the preten- sions of philosophy that seeks to understand reality in purely rational Van Til, Intro to Syst Theology.2 2 10/10/07 5:01:26 PM I N tr O D U cti ON terms. He affirms that the positive aspect of the tragic march of human history is the revelation of the principle of humiliation, which centers in the incarnation of Christ, whose own humiliation led to the redemption of the world.1 Various post-evangelical Protestants espouse their own versions of these schools. Stanley Grenz was drawn to postmodern models advo- cating, as he did, a christological center and a “non-linear” outline for redemption, over against the older creation-fall-redemption ground mo- tive. The problem with such accommodations is that they are not able to relate the human creature with God the Creator in objective categories. Lacking a true theology of the Creator-creature relationship, they cannot assert the historical nature of the fall into sin from the state of integrity. And because of this they cannot fully appreciate the moral revolution that led to the fall, and so the problem in the human condition is not so much moral guilt as it is finitude, at least to some extent. As a result, redemption is not fully of God’s mercy, with a transition from wrath to grace in history, through Christ. Instead they must grope after divine lib- eration, turning revelation into a projection of the self, rather than seeing it as God’s merciful self-disclosure to fallen humanity. To offer an authentic alternative, Van Til makes the strongest plea, in the present volume and throughout his writings, for the right kind of connection between the Creator and the creature. At every turn, he sets forth the fully self-sufficient God of the universe. When God creates, the creature has meaning and significance only because of the Creator-creature distinction. This is not dualism, against which Van Til argues forcefully. Nor is it intellectualism, which relegates revelation to an abstract content quite distinct from the real world of the creation. The dualist and the intellectualist prize ideas over the real world. They look upward for meaning, but in abstraction from the revelation found in the flowers of the fields and the cattle on a thou- sand hills. Thinking to guard against providentialism, which claims to track the hand of God in all the events of history, dualists erect a wall between the supernatural and the natural.
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